Director Shane Black has claimed that his original vision for Iron Man 3 featured a female villain, but Marvel forced him to change her to a male character to sell more toys.

The film's villain, Killian, was eventually played by Guy Pearce, but Black states "we had to change the entire script because of toy making".

"There was an early draft of Iron Man 3 where we had an inkling of a problem, which is that we had a female character who was the villain in the draft," Black told Uproxx.

"We had finished the script and we were given a no-holds-barred memo saying that cannot stand and we’ve changed our minds because, after consulting, we’ve decided that toy won’t sell as well if it’s a female.

"So we had to change the entire script because of toy making. Now, that’s not Kevin Feige [Marvel president]. That’s Marvel corporate, but now you don’t have that problem anymore.”

This week, Seven Towns’ Steve Perrin, Ooba’s Max Ford, Wow! Stuff’s Richard North, Jenga creator Leslie Scott and Bananagrams’ Rena Nathanson discuss whether, with more and more inventors getting to market through platforms like Kickstarter, the current landscape is as good as it’s ever been for toy and game inventors.